South Australia Mid North

Orroroo is a rural centre in the foothills of the Flinders Ranges on the edge of South Australia's marginal desert land. The Tank Hill Lookout on the eastern side of town provides views across the town and region. To the east the view encompasses the now disused, but full, Pekina Reservoir. On the way to the top are ancient Aboriginal carvings.

Where is it?: 262 km north of Adelaide.

Built features: Yesteryear Swimming Costume Gallery; Macdonald's rock carving (a poem written by a local who was leaving for the US).



A Giant Red Gum tree is the town's main local attraction. Its girth has been measured at just under 11 metres and is estimated to be over 500 years old. The tree is on the outskirts of town.

• Local Website

Surrounding Area

There are many cemeteries around the area which also paint a picture of the region's history.

Pekina Creek

Pekina creek provided a permanent supply of water to the town of Orroroo in the nineteenth century. There is a about a 45 minute walk from the park near this waterhole to the Pekina reservoir and back. The walk includes an Aboriginal rock art site, bushland and views over the reservoir. Crumbling ruins are all that remain of Pekina station. In the 1840s Pekina was the northernmost outpost of European settlement in South Australia. It was established by the Chambers brothers but after 18 months without a drop of rain they sold it to Price Maurice. In the 1870s the station was broken up and sold to wheat farmers.

Magnetic Hill

The layout of the surrounding land produces the optical illusion that a very slight downhill slope appears to be an uphill slope. Thus, a car left out of gear will appear to be rolling uphill due to gravity. The slope of gravity hills is an optical illusion, although sites are often accompanied by claims that magnetic or even supernatural forces are at work. To get there, take the road from Peterborough to Orroroo. Around 25 km from Peterborough you will come to a T-Junction - left to Jamestown and right to Orroroo. Turn left and travel approximately 1km, when you will cross over a railway crossing. Around 400 metres from that crossing and on the right-hand side of the road, there is a gravel road with a sign 'Magnetic Hill 8 km'. Just follow the signs.

Bendleby Ranges

To the north east of Orroroo is the working station of Bendleby Ranges. With camping grounds, cottages, homesteads, magnificent gorges and stunning ranges, Bendleby is a perfect place to stay for a weekend or two. Day visitors may go 4-wheel driving, bushwalking or mountain bike riding across the two largely unexplored ranges. The 4wd tracks, which double as mountain bike tracks, vary in intensity thus enabling everyone from novices to the most experienced to explore the 150km or so of station tracks.

Ghost towns of the Upper North
The plethora of ghost towns in the Upper North around Orroroo highlights the story of many South Australian country towns and the withdrawal of people from the inland for the past 100 years. Towns developed mostly as the hub of farming communities, for mining and to service the rail network, have been going out of business virtually since they were settled, some only lasting a few years. Nowhere has the retreat from the country been more extreme than in the Upper North, due mostly to the remarkable, but totally unjustified development of country towns in the region in the 1870s.

Goyder's Line plaques are found throughout the region, and indicate a line marked on the map of South Australia by Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder in 1865 delineating drought affected country. The line which passes through this area became an important factor in the settlement of South Australia as it indicated the limits of lands considered safe for agricultural development. The town receives 325 mm of rain each year which is typically spread over 79 days. The rest is dry.

Settlers flooded into the region during a brief unrealistic period of development, even though a large part of the Upper North lies north of Goyder's Line. Eventually, when the seasons turned against them, they realised that Goyder was right. Today, many Upper North towns, stretching from near Spalding in the south, west to Spencer Gulf, north to the Flinders Ranges National Park and east into the dry pastoral country, have reached a point of no return.

Carrieton

Carrieton, 30 kilometres north of Orroroo, offers its own historic tales. Named after the daughter of Governor Jervois, Carrieton developed around a well fitted with a whim for raising water. It became popular with teamsters on the dray route between Blinman and Burra while deveoping into a busy service centere for the wheat farmers moving into the area. A number of buildings from the town's early years (1880s) are still in use - Carrieton Hotel (1879), the Institute building (1890s) and three churches. From the same era is the former Wagon Factory, the railway station, the stone tank at Yanyarriw Whim and numerous old homes and shepherds' huts in the area. These days Carrieton hosts the annual Carrieton Rodeo.

To the east of Carrieton is the tiny settelent of Moockra. Moockra Tower has a scenic lookout in the Horseshoe Ranges. The drive to the top is rough and rutted so a 4WD vehicle is recommended.

Eurelia

Eurelia siding and goods shed

Midway between Orroroo and Carrieton is Eurelia, its rise and fall having followed that of the arrival and departure of the railway. Eurelia was on the Peterborough Quorn railway line, built in 1881, and ceased regular use by the 1980s. It then became the northern terminus of operations of the Steamtown Peterborough Railway Preservation Society running trains from Peterborough between 1981 and 2002. Such expectation was placed on Eurelia in becoming the future regional centre, for the first six years of its existence, from 1888 to 1894, the area was first known as the Eurelia District.

Eurelia had two dams, the first built when the railway was constructed. Water from the dams was shipped across the South Australian Railways during times of drought. Its name comes from the local Jadliaura language and translates to "place of the ear". It is thought that local Dreamtime stories associated with the Ranges locates Eurelia as an "ear" of a prostrate man.

Coomooroo

Pekina Run ruins

Coomooroo, to the west of Orroroo, is named after the hundred, which in turn was named by Governor Anthony Musgrave in 1875 after a word for "small food seeds" in an Aboriginal language. The area had locally been known as Poverty Corner, but was formally named Coomooroo at the request of the Mount Remarkable council.

The historic ruins of Pekina Rrun (established 1846), located at the south-eastern tip of Coomooroo, are listed on the South Australian Heritage Register. The main homestead for Pekina run was built along Pekina Creek where a reservoir was later built. It was started around 1847. In 1871 the leasehold of Pekina was resumed by the government for closer settlement. The extensive homestead and outbuildings gradually began to decay, but remains of the homestead orchard along Pekina Creek still remain today.

Morchard

Morchard Methodist Church

Morchard, on the Wilmington-Ucolta Road, has a number of buildings of interest to hetitage lovers. The only surviving budiness at this little settlement is Morchard Hotel. A number of other buildings survive, most notable of them being the Unity Church (built in 1924 by the Methodists) and the adjacent, derelict original Methodist Church, built in 1879. Beside the main road is a boiler used in the 19th century in the boiling down works of Pekina station.

Willowie

Willowie had its beginnings as Willowie station, a pastoral run taken up by Colin Campbell in 1844. The Campbell family became very prominent in the early days of settlement around the mountain and the plains. Campbell was soon joined by other farmers, many from Germany, and by 1881 as many as 135 selectors had taken up land in the Hundred of Willowie. Finally a town was surveyed and proclaimed in 1878 with the first land sales held in Adelaide in May. Willowie soon became a bustling community as wheat farmers slowly replaced the pastoralists. The town peaked in 1881. The following year proved difficult as a drought changed the town's fortunes, bringing the beginning of the end.

Amyton

The town of Amyton started with such high hopes, but like many of its residents, had a very short life. It only existed for 78 years. The town was surveyed in 1879 and like many other towns of its era, was named after one of Governor Jervois' children. One of the first buildings in the town of 204 allotments was the Methodist Church. Within three years Amyton began to struggle against drought, though ironically it was floods that destroyed the church in 1884. Another flood damaged its replacement in 1904. 1881 was a tough year; a thurderstown destroyed most of the crops and only a few houses escaped damage from an earthquake later in the year. By 1905, the unreliability of rainfall had led most farmers to change to mixed farming. The town's school closed in 1930 through lack of attendees. Amyton was officially declared to cease to exist on 13 June 1957.

Nothing remains of the town today except a few ruins, some rubble heaps and Amyton's small cemetery which has a most beautiful and impressive driveway from the main road, flanked on both sides with a double row of native trees, planted in July 1974. A plaque honours the pioneers and settlers of Amyton and its surrounding district.

Johnburgh

Drive through the Oladdie Hills and visit the ghost town of Johnburgh, where many of the old buildings still remain. 32km northeast of Orroroo on the aweeping Oladdie Plain, Johnburgh came to life when settlers pushed into the region in the 1870s, boldly taking up small farms to grow wheat, despite Surveyor-General Sir George Goyder s warning in 1865 that it was too risky north of his famous Line of Rainfall. The buildings appear much as they were when the town was proclaimed in 1879. It became home to a few hundred people at its peak and included two post offices as well as a general store, a hotel, blacksmith and a saddler. All are long gone. The Johnburgh School started in 1891 and educated 85 children in 1899, running on and off until it closed in 1967.

Hammond

Also named after one of Governor Jervois' children (his elder son), Hammond was once a thriving town standing in the middle of Willochra Plain, set against the picturesque backdrop of the Flinders Range. It was a railhead community and one of the busiest of the wheat towns in the area, but its golden era of the late 19th century came to a close when the railway closed and the majority of its population moved on. Today most of its buildings are unoccupied or crumbling, from empty houses to the general store, post office, bank, fettlers cottages and hotel.

Brief History of Orroroo
Prior to the arrival of white settlers, the area to the east of the Flinders Ranges was the domain of the Ngadjuri Aboriginal peoples. The first Europeans to settle, John and James Chambers took up the vast Pekina Run in 1844. They stayed for 17 months during which time they did not receive a millimetre of rain. The first permanent white settler was Charlie Easther (1864) whose eating house became a popular stopover for drovers passing through. Legend has it that, when asked to establish a Post Office in the town the premier, Sir Charles Todd, quipped: "Dear me! There are only two letters in Orroroo. What do you want a post office for?"



The town was once connected by rail to Peterborough and Quorn, and was served by a Class 1 station and a large Goods Shed. During 1962, concrete grain silos were built in the Yard. these provided the bulk of traffic until the railway was closed in 1987. Orroroo was the last attended station on the railway; staff were withdrawn and the station operated as "unattended" from August 1981.

Origin of name: the town was named by Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder in 1875 when he designed the town's simple grid system and named the streets by numbers (first to seventeenth). The name was suggested by early settler Charlie Easther whose land was subdivided to create the town. It is of Aboriginal origin, but its meaning and correct pronunciation are still subject to conjecture. It is variously said to mean 'place of the magpie'; a rapid motion; the name of a local Aboriginal girl; or 'place of departure'.